only a face. She had a figure to rival it. One he hadn’t fully appreciated when she’d called on him in Grosvenor Square. Then she’d been clad in a dark, shapeless dress. But now…
Now she wore a gown of champagne silk, with tiny puffed sleeves dropping loosely off of her bare shoulders, and a neckline cut low along the swell of her bosom.
His fingers clenched reflexively on the opera glasses.
Her gown exposed a wide expanse of pale, creamy skin. And her hair, caught up in jeweled pins to reveal the slender column of her throat, was artfully disheveled, looking as if at any moment it might fall down around her in a mass of dark curls. When combined with the rosy flush in her cheeks and the equally rosy hue to the wide, full softness of her mouth, the entire effect was that of a woman rising from bed after a passionate interlude with her lover.
And who the devil was the young gentleman beside her? Some confounded coxcomb who had schemed his way into escorting her to the theater?
The young man turned and whispered something into Miss Honeywell’s ear. She tilted her head to listen, giving the young man her full and undivided attention. And then she smiled.
St. Clare felt a bitter surge of jealousy.
“What are you scowling at?” Mattingly asked in a low undertone. “Haven’t caught sight of another country squire worth calling out, have you?”
St. Clare thrust the opera glasses at Mattingly. “Who is that fellow opposite?”
“Which fellow?” Mattingly peered through the glasses. “Him? In the gold-embroidered waistcoat? That’s Trumble’s heir, George. He’s a tolerable chap. Not a bit like Burton-Smythe. No need to… Ah. Wait a moment. Well, fancy that. I’d heard Miss Honeywell was back in town. Haven’t seen her in—let me think—going on four years.”
St. Clare turned his gaze on his friend. Mattingly was dark-haired, nearly as tall as St. Clare was himself, and generally considered to be quite handsome. “You know her? How?”
“Met her during her come out.”
“Good.” St. Clare retrieved the opera glasses from Mattingly and once again fixed them on Miss Honeywell. “You can introduce me to her at the interval.”
Entering Miss Honeywell’s theater box, St. Clare and Lord Mattingly found her engaged in conversation with a tall, fair-haired young lady who Mattingly identified as Miss Jane Trumble. The two ladies’ elderly companion was snoring softly in her chair, and George Trumble was nowhere to be found.
“My brother has gone to fetch us some lemonade,” Miss Trumble explained after Mattingly made the introductions.
St. Clare supposed he should have felt a pang of conscience at that. No doubt the flock of females in the earl’s box were expecting that he and Mattingly would procure them refreshments as well. But as he looked at Margaret Honeywell, he couldn’t summon the slightest twinge of remorse at abandoning his responsibilities.
Let some other enterprising gentleman tend to the needs of Miss Steele and the dowager’s granddaughters.
“I say, what did you think of the first act?” Mattingly asked, deftly maneuvering himself into the seat beside Miss Trumble. He wasn’t the brightest of fellows, but St. Clare credited him with good instincts when it came to assisting his friends. As easily as he’d lent his opera glasses, he now occupied Miss Trumble, leaving the field with Miss Honeywell open for St. Clare. “Saw Kean in Othello,” he continued. “Not sure his Macbeth is up to the same standard.”
“He seems to be doing an excellent job,” Miss Trumble replied. “But then, I have nothing with which to compare him. Was his portrayal of Othello really as brilliant as everyone says?”
While Mattingly and Miss Trumble discussed Shakespeare, St. Clare approached Miss Honeywell. There was a strangely unwelcoming expression in her blue eyes. “May I?” He gestured at the empty seat next to her.
“If you like,” she said coolly.
He sat down beside her in the chair that had lately been occupied by George Trumble. This, too, was the view he’d enjoyed. A diaphanous gown clinging to gently rounded bare shoulders and falling in shimmering folds down to delicately slippered feet. Creamy skin illuminated by the flickering candlelight from the chandeliers. A provocative décolletage accented at its center with a small cluster of wildflowers. And that unforgettable face. Wide eyes, soft lips, and a stubbornly cleft little chin, all framed by escaping tendrils of glossy mink hair.
Up close she was even more ravishing than she’d appeared from across the room.